Courts should take great caution in using the phrase “and/or,” especially in jury instructions, because it is ambiguous and potentially imprecise. Where wording permits two contradictory interpretations, one correct and one erroneous, the jury may be misled as to the law.
Supreme
G.W. v. State, No. 23S-JV-246, __N.E.3d __ (Ind., Apr. 10, 2024).
When a juvenile court fails to enter the requisite findings of fact in its dispositional order, an appellate court should neither affirm nor reverse. Instead, the proper remedy is to remand the case under Ind. App. R. 66(C)(8) while holding the appeal in abeyance.
Safeco Ins. Co. v. Blue Sky Innovation Group, Inc., No. 23S-CT-272, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind. Ct. App., Apr. 2, 2024).
Trial court properly dismissed a third-party spoliation claim when there was no special relationship between the parties to create a duty to preserve the evidence.
Cooley v. Cooley, No. 23S-DN-245, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., March 20, 2024).
Trial courts have broad statutory authority to order a security or other guarantee, when necessary, to secure the division of property in a dissolution of marriage; the trial court properly required husband to obtain and subsidize a life insurance policy on his retirement benefits.
A.W. v. State, No. 23S-JV-40, __ N.E.3d __ (Ind., March 12, 2024).
Under the second step of the double jeopardy test announced in the Indiana Supreme Court’s Wadle opinion, when assessing whether an offense is factually included, a court may examine only the facts as presented on the face of the charging instrument. Moreover, where ambiguities exist in a charging instrument about whether one offense is factually included in another, courts must construe those ambiguities in the defendant’s favor, and thus find a presumptive double jeopardy violation. In this event, the State can later rebut this presumption at the third step of the Wadle test.